(first posted 8/21/2011) We often use this space to take a serious look at our passion-cars and the companies that make them. But a little lighthearted diversion now and again keeps everything in perspective in a world gone mad.When I penned a piece about TV cop cars a while back, I was frankly astonished that there were as many people as myself that enjoyed the intersection of pop culture and commerce.

I often find myself singing along with the radio in my car (and believe me, I’m glad you can’t hear the result). After a broadcast career in a galaxy far, far away and many years ago, I have called on my DJ experiences to connect the dots between music and mobility. The result is the article you see below. It turns out that popular music and the auto industry have actually been friendly relations from the early days of both. So let’s hum a happy tune as we remember the times when the two seemed to be in perfect harmony.

In My Merry Oldsmobile-The earliest days of jaunty, open air motoring inspired one of the nations leading songwriters to exalt the nation’s newest pastime. As early as 1905, one of the biggest names in entertainment , Gus Edwards, penned the music for what became a pop sensation in its day. The 1903 curved dash Oldsmobile is considered one of the first mass market automobiles and as such, it was tailor made for a mass market song.

Radio hadn’t been commercialized yet, so the big money in those days was in the sale of sheet music. Public performances acted like radio airplay in our own time as free advertising for the composers product.The song was considered somewhat bawdy in its day, as it suggested that (as would become the norm with auto related tunes),the subject characters would engage in romantic congress at some point. The car itself was a smash- It stayed in production until 1907 and sold over 19,000 copies, big numbers in those days.

Terraplane Blues– A couple of explanations. One- The Terraplane was a Hudson series that helped get the company through the Great Depression and was produced from 1932 to 1938. Hudson needed the volume that a lower priced make could deliver and the’Plane did just that.

Two- This is a song about sex. Considered quite daring in its day,the song,recorded by blues journeyman Robert Johnson in 1936, was never a hit because it was considered way too racy for radio. But compared to what comes out of car speakers today, this belongs on The Old Time Gospel Hour. It sold about 5,000 copies and failed to make the charts. This is one of the few instances where the car sold many times the number of records about the car.

Hot Rod Lincoln– This song has been recorded half a dozen times since 1955, but it took Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen to make the song a smash in the summer of 1972.

More spoken than sung, its a toe tapper that really fits more into the novelty song category than serious music. It describes the travails of misspent youth in a race between then current Fords (hot rod V-8’s) and Lincoln’s (bigger hot rod V-8) . Its a rockabilly classic. It actually made it all the way to #9 in ’72, a remarkable performance for a song in that era that didn’t extol drug use.

409-The Beach Boys- Here is a song that stands taller in our memories than it ever did on the record chart. Lots of my buddies can recite the lyrics word for word for this ditty, which was released on the “B” side of the hit “Surfin Safari” in 1962. The subject matter is the W- series 409 engine that Chevy installed in some of its plain jane Biscaynes and Bel Airs in those years. These sleepers only looked mild mannered. The 409 had the beans to embarrass anything from FoMoCo or MoPar in those days. The song made it to #76 that summer and later inspired a lawsuit between Brian Wilson,Gary Usher and Mike Love over credit for the composition.

Little Deuce Coupe- More Beach Boys pop candy, this time from 1963. This song was not much longer than a commercial jingle (only 1:38) and sang the praises of the 1932 Ford V-8 that many beach bum types were hopping up in those days.

Mike Love provided the vocals,but the lyrics were penned by a California DJ named Roger Christian. It made it all the way to #14 in ’63 and is one of the very few songs from that transitional era in music to remain popular beyond its time.

Chevy Van- Who knew that you could seduce some comely young thing in a clapped out Chevy panel van? Robert Johns told us just how it went down in this 1973 smash (#5 on Billboard). Hey, it was the 70’s. It really could have happened. Anyway, I never figured out why Chevy didn’t use this tune behind their ads in those days. Maybe it was too counterculture. If you wince when you hear this, you probably knew all of the words at one time or another. Cover versions of this exist from such notables as Waylon Jennings (!), Eric Church and Sammy Kershaw. This song served as an early warning of sorts. All of those full size van rendezvous’ in the mid 70’s later resulted in huge demand for family minivans in the early 80’s.

Mustang Sally– A Wilson Pickett smash, and named one of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

This song actually charted twice (On R&B and Pop charts) and made the soundtrack of the 1991 feature film The Commitments. It’s highest ranking was #6 in 1966 in R&B and has been covered by more groups than we could possibly name here.

Low Rider– War- 1974. This is not a song about a specific car model, but more like a lifestyle. War included this as part of their 1975 album “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” and it zoomed right up the charts and has been featured in countless soundtracks and remade at least two dozen times since. MTV was still a half decade away, so we just have to imagine what the subject cars looked like. It peaked at #7 on the pop charts that year and was number one on the R&B chart for weeks.

Mercedes Boy- Disposable, saccharine, forgettable disco-lite, this is what passed for entertainment back in the 80’s. In my DJ days, I would rather take a beating than play this 3 times in 5 hours, but business was business and that’s what we did. Pebbles hit number two on the chart with this one and I stepped into the loo whenever it was scheduled for airplay. If you were listening out there, I sincerely apologize.

Pink Cadillac-This is not an Aretha Franklin song (although I wish it was- hers was “Freeway Of Love”). Actually Bruce Springsteen penned this one and Natalie Cole made it a top 5 smash in April,1988. More sexual metaphors that just happen to involve GM’s luxury division.

Okay, this is not an all inclusive list. I’ve left out a few. I would love to get some fresh perspectives on your favorite car tunes.

Anyone who’s ever been embarrassed by an untimely malfunction of their prized ride can relate to “No Particular Place to Go,” which is a Chuck Berry classic. As for personal favorites, put me down for The Rip-Chords’ “Hey Little Cobra” and Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time.”

On the whole, however, I prefer truck-driving country songs, songs like “Tombstone Every Mile” by Dick Curless or “Six Days on the Road” by Dave Dudley. Since you mentioned Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, I’ll add “I Took Three Bennies and My Semi-Truck Won’t Start” to that list.

Back in the ’70s I was a comely young thing who got seduced in a Chevy van. Our entire culture was very different back then, that’s for sure. I don’t think anyone can really understand it unless they lived through it…

Rolling down the superslab,
Pearl pink Cadillac
Red head riding shotgun
Guitar in the back
Radio up
Top rolled down
Got the cleanest Eldorado around
Pearl paint, CADILLAC
Long and shiny, CADILLAC
Open ragtop, CADILLAC
RENO BOUND!

Oh and of course “Route 66” my favorite version is the one recorded by Asleep at the Wheel.

Easy one-American Pie
If You Got the Money Honey (Caddy)
Jungle Land by Springstein- no specific cars but all about them
Pure hillbilly – Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother (pickup truck, think GMC but can’t remember)
The songs weren’t specifically about the cars but they had a big part in them.

I loved This when I drove my 86 Marc Cross LeBaron Conv… styling as I looked at The Hood ornament… Today I Drive the 203″ Intrepid, That passes as a Chrysler whale. The B52’s are fun. I Just reaLIzed that I now B-52.

How could I forget Weird Al’s ode to his troubled ’64 Plymouth “Stop Draggin’ My Car Around”? Or how about Adam Sandler’s “Ode to my Car”? Or Jamiroquai’s “Travelling Without Moving”, the first 10 seconds of which is the sound of Jay K starting up his Diablo and running it through the gears?

Then there are three songs that I know of that aren’t about cars but due to advertizing usage they are permanently connected to them:

Another one: “Belvedere Crusin'” also by Al but it never made it album. Not his best, but he was 16 at the time and it was his first song on the Dr Demento Show:

The audio is smeg in the first stanzas so here are the lyrics for them:

Now, you won’t find me braggin’
‘Bout my big green station wagon
Or tellin’ ’bout the traffic laws I’m breakin’
Everybody knows that I wouldn’t dare
Match my wits with a red Corvair
And just the thought of a Pinto leaves me shakin’

Now, I don’t think that I could hack
Drivin’ a big white Cadillac
With ripped up upholstery and unnecessary frills
No, I don’t think that I could bear
Drivin’ somethin’ other than a Belvedere
In a Belvedere I can really get my thrills

Goin’ Belvedere cruisin’ tonight
Just watch me pass that Porsche on the right
I can take you anywhere
In my 1964 Belvedere
Goin’ Belvedere cruisin’ tonight

I got a star on my car and one on my chest,
A gun on my hip and the right to arrest,
I’m the guy who’s the boss on this highway,
Watch a how your driving when your ridin’ my way
If you break the law you’ll hear from me you know,
I’m a workin’ for the state I’m the highway patrol…

“Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits, which is about both driving and Detroit; ungodly long (over 14 minutes) and poignant to the point of being depressing, but still a beautiful song.:

You know I’d sooner forget but I remember those nights
When life was just a bet on a race ‘tween the lights
You had your head on my shoulder you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don’t seem to care
But believe in me baby and I’ll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
’cause I’ve run every red light on memory lane
I’ve seen desperation explode into flames
And I don’t want to see it again…
From all of these signs saying sorry but we’re closed
All the way, down the Telegraph Road

$1000 car is gonna let you down,
More than it’s ever gonna get you around.
Replace your gaskets and paint over your rust,
You’ll still end up with something that you’ll never trust.
$1000 car’s life was through,
‘Bought 50,000 miles ‘fore it got to you.

Oh why did I ever buy, a $1000 car.

A $1000 car ain’t even gonna roll,
Till you throw at least another thousand in the hole.
Sink your money in it, and there you are
The owner of a 2,000 dollar 1,000 dollar car. (guitar solo)
If you’ve only got a $1000,
You ought to just buy a good guitar
Learn how to play it it’ll take you farther
Than any old $1000 car.
If a $1000 car was truly worth a damn,
Then why would anybody ever spend ten grand
Oh why did I ever buy
A thousand dollar car….

When I was 16, I had heard Heart’s “Barracuda” at a pool hall and really liked it, so I went and bought a Greatest Hits tape of theirs. I liked a lot of it, but “Crazy On You,” while really not car-related, is still my favorite ass-hauling song. I drove my Grand Prix at rather illegal speeds on the backroads of rural northeastern Oklahoma with that song blasting. At 70-90 mph, there is no song I’ve ever heard that seems to fit better. It’s a damn shame they slobbed into sappy girl songs later on, because the stuff from the ’70s kicked major ass.

“Lord Mr. Ford,” surprised no one mentioned it yet.

“When Daddy Let Me Drive” is special to me, sappy as it is. When it came out and I’d heard it for the first time, I called my dad and told him there was a song on country radio that would mean a lot to him when he heard it because it almost perfectly describes my childhood and how he let me drive everything from the earliest age. I didn’t tell him what it was about, just that it was a new Alan Jackson song. He called me crying when he finally heard it.

“25 Miles” by Edwin Starr is a song about walking back home to a woman, but it works pretty damn good as a driving song, too.

“My Hometown” by Springsteen, just for the Buick reference and the immediately vivid image that the phrase “big ol’ Buick” conjures.

Not really about a car at all but one of a car’s many uses-Meat Loaf’s “Paradise By the Dashboard Light.” Also there ain’t no Coupe deVille hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box in “Two Out of Three.”

Now Daddy ran the whiskey in a big block Dodge
Bought it at an auction at the mason’s lodge
Johnson County sheriff painted on the side
Just shot a coat of primer then he looked inside
Well him and my uncle tore that engine down

I still remember that rumblin’ sound
Well the sheriff came around in the middle of the night

A little older is a song “Sorry, I want a Ferarri” from a 1959 James Cagney movie “Never Steal Anything Small.”

Another real oldie (and a fabulous one) is a song from the ’40s by the Nat King Cole Trio “What Makes Me Treat You the Way That I Do?” –
“Bought you a fur coat for Christmas
A Diamond Ring
A Big Cadillac car
And everything
What makes me treat you the way that I do?
Gee Baby ain’t I good to you.”

Also Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out” that refers to the Cad-i-lac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac.

Oops – two more real oldies: The G.I Jive by Louis Jordan and his Tympani 5 from the 40s

“This is the G I Jive
Man Alive
They give you a private tank that features a little device called Fluid Drive
Jack, if you still survive
Chunk all of your junk
back into your trunk
and fall on your bunk
Thunk”

There is also an obscure 40s instrumental from the Jimmie Lunceford band called Jeep Rhythm.

Also somewhat obscure is “Blue Chevrolet” by the Beat Farmers. The Beat Farmers were a San Diego institution who almost made it nationally in the late 80s. They played what was called “cowpunk” at the time but now would probably be described as “alt-country” — except they had a raunchy, beer-soaked sense of humor that Wilco et al totally lack.

“He’s the king of the cobras, a pavement hound
He plays upon a waitress at the Space Lodge Lounge
In walks ‘no shoes – no service’ as the plates hit the ground
Her two-weeks notice just blew into town

There goes a red-headed legend in a blue chevrolet

He cools the evening with a Blue Ribbon beer
She’s chewin’ gum in his right ear
Broke down in Bedrock Canyon, dropped the clutch and pressure plate
You know the red-head took two quarts
Now she’s runnin’ great

There goes a red-headed legend in a blue chevrolet

I went on vacation, out on Interstate 10
The heat’s gettin’ to ya, so’s the wife and kids
He’ll rise up out of the blacktop, like a pagan god
And blow on by you like some mirage

There goes a red-headed legend in a blue chevrolet”

Also, “Make it Last” is a great Beat Farmers road-trip song, and “Wheels” is full of great car/music/sex double (triple?) entendres.

I remember Freeway of Love when it came out, even though I was only five at the time. It was always playing when Dad was puttering around in the garage – it must have gotten a LOT of airtime! I always liked it, but it’s seldom played these days.

This thread is too fun! Sometime in the early 2000s, Chevy used bits of songs featuring them in their print ads. They found out there was something like 1200 songs using Chevy or its products. Someone more adventurous than I can go looking through the “Upfront” section of C/D to find that information.

Sort of sad that most of the songs listed are pre-1993. I don’t hear any songs singing the virtues of Miatas or Priore (Prii? whatever…)

I searched the C/D Information Dirt Road and came up with bupkis. I did a web search and lo and behold Pandora is helping Chevrolet celebrate 100 years with a dedicated channel. It has 100 songs out of more than 600 possible! So halve what I wrote back in August.

I find it really funny that Weird Al’s “Dare to be Stupid” made the Top 100.

“Settle down, raise a family, join the PTA,
buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet
Then party ’till you’re broke then they drag you away
Its OK you can dare to be stupid!”

OH NO! All of you forgot the songs; (Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me A) Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin,the obscure Speed On by Nicky Hopkins from The Tin Man Was A Dreamer album,Riders On The Storm By The Doors from the album L.A. Woman, to a certain extent, 19th Nervous Breakdown by The Rolling Stones, and Rusty Chevrolet by Da Yoopers!

I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Foreigner’s Rev On The Red Line. Of course I am not sure it was released as a single. It’s, in my opinion at least, the song that best portrays the hot rod/ street racer culture.
Isaac Hays’ Theme From Shaft has an opening rift that reminds me of wheels turning fast.
And, of course I have always liked Wilson Picket’s Mustang Sally.

How about ’57 Chevrolet by Billie Jo Spears ?
Come and look at this old faded photograph.
Honey, tell me what it brings to mind.
It’s a picture of that ’57 Chevrolet.
I wish that we could ride it one more time.

Wow, six years from the original and I can’t believe no one mentioned “Hey Little Cobra” by the Rip Chords. A whole album of “Hot Rod Hits” too… I may have to go see if I still have this album, given to me by or “stolen” from an uncle.

A lot of great songs here. Although the Kinks are not generally known for car songs, here’s one from them called “Driving” from their Arthur album about the simple joys of motoring to a picnic in the grass:

Gold by John Stewart is a song I love to put on while driving long distances.

The K-DST classic rock station from GTA: San Andreas also had a lot of good songs I now associate with road tripping, like “White Wedding” by Billy Idol, “Running Down The Dream” by Tom Petty, and “Barracuda” by Heart.

The machine of a dream, such a clean machine,
With the pistons a pumpin’, and the hubcaps all gleam.
When I’m holding your wheel,
All I hear is your gear,
When my hand’s on your grease gun,
Oh it’s like a disease son,
I’m in love with my car, gotta feel for my automobile,
Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar,
Such a thrill when your radials squeal.